[daveatstyacht]

Hi all,
I am currently about to start a project in which I need to have either ANSYS or ABAQUS interact with Star CCM+ in a coupled manner. That is to say I need the deflections of the structural model in the FEA to be reflected in the CFD model. I would use the built in solid stress solver of CCM+, but it is not built to handle orthotropic, laminate structures (composites) and so I need to couple ccm+ to a full fledged FEA. I mention ABAQUS and ANSYS because those are the two FEA programs readily available for use on the cluster I use. I am using CCM+ 5.04 (don't have a choice on the version). I have read in the help files of CCM+ that it is possible to couple with ABAQUS, but from what I can discern it is one way mapping from CFD to structural model. I am open to using third party software, but they must be FREE (or exceedingly cheap... since it will come out of my own pocket) and readily installable on a Linux cluster by someone unfamiliar with the program (I am not able to install it myself as a user).

My question is: Is there a currently available and inexpensive/free way of coupling CCM+ to one of those two FEA programs in the manner I described above (ie both directions)? Any insight on this would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,
Dave

[daveatstyacht]

In answer to my own question, on further digging through the help files, Abaqus 6.8 can be explicitly coupled to ccm+ 5.04, but it may require some work to create a macro to couple the two in an more automated way. In any case it is great to see these two programs can work together to do FSI structural problems without third party software.